His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance
with the old, corrupted faith of Rome than with the better light
of the church in which he had been born and bred. In Mr.
Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a
bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine
had plied it on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself
the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of
that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that
of many other pious Puritans, to fast--not however, like them,
in order to purify the body, and render it the fitter medium of
celestial illumination--but rigorously, and until his knees
trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils,
likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness,
sometimes with a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his own
face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he
could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection
wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. In these
lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to
flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light
of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more
vividly and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it
was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the
pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of
shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but
grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of
his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like
frown, and his mother turning her face away as she passed by.
Ghost of a mother--thinnest fantasy of a mother--methinks she
might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now,
through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so
ghastly, glided Hester Prynne leading along little Pearl, in her
scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet
letter on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own breast.
None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by
an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their
misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not
solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that
big, square, leather-bound and brazen-clasped volume of
divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest
and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt
with. It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his,
that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities
there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the
spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole
universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing
within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself
in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.
The only truth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real
existence on this earth was the anguish in his inmost soul, and
the undissembled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once
found power to smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there would
have been no such man!